Friday 4 January 2008

Dror Elimelech Feiler (Hebrew:דרור אלימלך פיילר‎; born 31 August 1951) is a Swedish-Israeli musician and artist. Though born in Tel Aviv, Israel, he has been living in Stockholm, Sweden since 1973. Feiler studied new music and its interpretation at the Fylkingen Institut for New Music from 1975 to 1977, musicology at Stockholm University from 1977 to 1978 and composition at the Music Academy of Stockholm from 1978 to 1983.

Feiler's father worked on a kibbutz and met a group of Palestinians in Bucharest in 1986 while it was still illegal and he was also sentenced to prison for it. His 80-year-old mother works with mobile health centrals in Palestinian villages in the West Bank that have no other access to health-care and other services. Feiler served as a paratrooper in the Israel Defense Forces, but defected in 1973 as one of the first "refuseniks".Feiler also plays saxophone in the jazz band Lokomotiv Konkret, and founded The Too Much Too Soon Orchestra. In January 2004 he made international news with his artwork Snow White and The Madness of Truth, which was vandalized by then Israeli ambassador to Sweden Zvi Mazel. He is active as a composer of modern music, which includes composition music for symphonic orchestras, opera, chamber music and electro-acoustic music.

Feiler has worked with Merzbow, Frith, Cora, Gustafsson, Tarasov, Karkowski, among others, and in this carefully crafted album one can understand the reason for such a diverse cast of collaborators (...) The opening piece ("Anzats") sounds like a meeting between the likes of Zoviet France and any given improv sax player, with the alto queeks clashing against a dense wall of noise-drones. The same post-industrial aesthetics is pursued in tracks like "Sendero Luminoso", although Feiler's use of the alto sax works its way to lend the piece a more free and unstable course. Tracks like "Hallel", "Sei Yabe" or "Even the Blood Must Sleep" take the listener in a different mood, with solo sax improvisations expanding on what could well be traditional European tunes. There is a sense of melancholy in these pieces, as well as a less in-your-face approach that manages to balance the record and allows the listener to engage in a less breath-taking experience. The album closes with "Umipnei Chatoenu", a track that could be mistaken for a darker piece from one of the early Crawling With Tarts recordings. Its sinister vinyl crackings and loops and the strange nostalgic gloom it evokes in the listener are almost frightening and are the perfect ending for the record, summing up the previous compositions from a (very) different angle. The highlight, however, is "Pig Iron", a brutal noise assault that somehow merges memories of Jazkamer, Merzbow and Napalm Death while being more hypnotic and elusive than these artists ever were. All in all, a very interesting record by Feiler, who in the past few years has taken a different -- and much less interesting -- approach to music making.

Dear Continuo:Hope you'll enjoy this and other posts. A jolly new year for you as well, and do stay tuned.

Dear JMI agree that his political positions are not interesting (you should read his manifesto on the alleged virtues noise against fascism and the establishment...) but an artist's ideological stance is always relevant. The biographic paragraphs were copied from wikipedia as there was not more information available. Keep in touch.

Dear JoshUnfortunately, we cannot help you with that one. But I'm sure that if you look around, something may come up..It is true: Ornette's Golden Circle is still one of our least popular posts. It is not a matter of being square or round; the popularity of a particular post is always difficult to predict and there are constant surprises, good or bad.Thank you for your attention, and feel free to drop by sometime.

At first I didn't recognize this, then I realized that the cover you show is a beat-up copy of the slim-packaged original. There is a wonderful series in these slim packages of experimental works that I need to dig out of storage in order to tell more about them.Thanks for your blog. Extra-musicalstatements make a more well-rounded presentation and thanks for those extra words about the performers/composers.

Ahahaha! That's a fine compliment, Mr./Mrs. Machine. Feel free to come by (no pun intended) when you have a break from your time-consuming activity and have some "good dirty fun" with some of our toys.Enjoy.

I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I think I will leave my comment.I don’t know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog.I will keep visiting this blog very often.